On Wednesday, 8 December 2021, the Universität Würzburg, Germany, conferred upon Charles M. Atkinson (professor emeritus, musicology) the degree of Doctor honoris causa.  In his laudatio for the award ceremony, Professor Andreas Haug stated that in conferring the honorary doctorate the university "honors one of the world's leading representatives of research in medieval music, whose work on the history of music and music theory of the Middle Ages is unanimously regarded by experts as groundbreaking, a scholar whose standard-setting scholarly oeuvre has made a lasting contribution to the reputation that historical music research enjoys in our discipline to this day, despite all the changes in research paradigms, methods, and fashions." .  .  .

"The professional esteem in which Charles Atkinson is held is evidenced by visiting professorships such as the one at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, by his election as President of the American Musicological Society, and by honorary awards such as the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society and the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize of the Medieval Academy of America. His book The Critical Nexus: Tone-System, Mode, and Notation in Early Medieval Music, published in 2009, in which he gave research into the formative phase of European music a new direction that went beyond previous research approaches, received two awards: the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society in 2010, and the Charles Homer Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America in 2015, whose recipients include such renowned scholars as the historians Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Richard Krautheimer and Paul Otto Kristeller, and the art historian Erwin Panofsky."

Atkinson retired from The Ohio State University in 2017, where he was Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Music and University Distinguished Professor.  Since his retirement he has been living and working in Würzburg, where he is a member of the editorial staff for the project Corpus monodicum: the monophonic music of the Latin Middle Ages.